10 Cultural Resolutions for 2010: Join Forces

From Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck to Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, the season’s star collaborations pack twice the punch. Certain artistic types possess such a gracious, unimpeachable coolness that they seem to inhabit a parallel universe. Take Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck, whose debut album together, IRM, features a video for the single “Heaven Can Wait” populated with a dinosaur in an Elvis wig and an astronaut with a wobbly stack of pancakes for a head. Both artists move (and play tennis and have slumber parties) unblinkingly in this surreally imagined world, and it’s this slightly wacky, experimental point of view that they bring to the album’s sound, too. “It was just a collaboration that worked in a mysterious way,” says Gainsbourg of recording with veteran indie magus Beck. “Things just happened. It was a lot of happy coincidences.” Out in the United States this January, the songs on the album ramble across a diverse musical galaxy, from jangly rock ballads to crooning chansons. “Because it was him, I had the impression that we could go in every direction and that we could explore a lot of different styles, and that’s what we did,” she says. Gainsbourg is humble about her contribution—“I was there to react to what he was performing. I came up with the most ideas I could, but he basically did everything: He did the music, wrote the lyrics, produced the album”—but her influence and her talky, soughing vocals are unmistakable. Produced over the course of two years, IRM (French for “MRI”) is the inspired upshot of a cerebral hemorrhage Gainsbourg suffered in 2007 after a waterskiing accident. She had to spend hours undergoing MRIs, accompanied only by the “very disturbing sounds” they make—sounds you can hear echoed on the percussion-heavy album, as well as some of the less personal, antiseptically minimal songs on it (like the self-titled single). “I remember being in the machine and thinking, There’s something rhythmically that’s completely chaotic but very interesting, and just wishing we could do something about it.” It’s her third album (her first musical effort was “Lemon Incest,” a song she recorded with her father, Serge Gainsbourg, in 1984), but Gainsbourg, who won Best Actress at Cannes this year for her performance in Lars von Trier’s seizure-inducing latest, Antichrist, isn’t comfortable being called a musician. “I haven’t found a real balance between my desire and my confidence, so it’s still a work in progress,” she says. So what keeps her coming back to music? “Just to be able to meet people like Beck. It’s very rare.” Another set of rare birds guaranteed heavy rotation in the New Year are She & Him—that is, Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. The rubric might sound familiar: Unduly gifted, musically inclined actress teams up with prolific bard. Fittingly, Deschanel and Ward met on the film set for The Go-Getter, where the director, Martin Hynes, asked them to sing a duet for the end credits. This led to their first critically acclaimed album in 2008, Volume One, and now their second, Volume Two, is due out this March on Merge Records. Deschanel’s honey-soaked, honky-tonk vocals make for feel-good pop when paired with Ward’s warm, fuzzy (that’s the reverb) chords. Blueberry-eyed Deschanel is fresh from this summer’s (500) Days of Summer and Ward, with five solo albums under his belt, from a joint effort with pals Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Jim James under the not-at-all-hyperbolic moniker Monsters of Folk. Volume Two recalls Phil Spector as much as Patsy Cline and proves that collaborations, when done right, can be really brilliant stuff. If ever two were one, then surely She & Him.